Exxon’s refusal to write down its acquisition of XTO is part of an “arrogant, aberrant, long-standing…posture” at the company, said one of the accountants, Franklin Bennett, a former senior accounting analyst in Exxon’s oil and gas business, in a complaint filed under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Bennett left Exxon in 1995, well before the XTO deal, but maintains the company’s accounting of the acquisition fits with its past practice of handling assets that might be worth less than anticipated.
Truth finally comes around as it will again. They lie.